Friday, November 5, 2010

artistic brooding

Being prone to kinds of depression, sadness and general all around melancholia, and exhibiting such behavior to those close to me, I received this recently from a friend:

"respecting your feelings of sadness, could the sadness just be a place in you you retreat to to nourish your interriority, introspection and need to just 'brood'? Creative brooding is very important. It is a kin to contemplation. I thought of that because your sense of humor is so at the ready and you laugh easily. It seems incomparable with sadness? Maybe what seems like a place you don't want to nourish because you see it as a place of sadness, is the place God is calling you to hear His whisper. And God's whisper is always affirming, supportive, caring and loving.

things aren't always what they seem. I am offering an alternative interpretation to what you label sadness to a healthy place of divine brooding.

sit in your 'sadness' as a listening post for God and a nesessary place to visit because maybe it is your place for hearing God. Maybe you just need to brood. You are after all a kind of artist. Don't all artists need inside places?"

It's true, I think. I believe I become the saddest at times when I've most removed myself from God. I think the sadness is some kind of natural soul-instinct that draws me closer to the Almighty.